I'm interested in picking up a guild wars campaign or two.....but one big thing keeps bothering me...the fact that you can just go buy "skill packs"

Does this mean you can essentially buy all the skills one would get by playing a Roleplaying character all the way 1-20 and accumulating skills the legit way? If so, what is the point of even playing a RP character when people are just buying the skillsets and making PVP characters.

The only thing that really interests me in GW is the campaign and 1-20 game, so this is why it concerns me and why i ask. If i'm understanding the skills thing wrong, please let me know.

These skill packs allow you to just jump into PvP and play. If you do the PvE experience you have to buy most of your skills with money not just unlock them as well as capture elite skills from boss NPC's.

Buying the skills packs does not get you skills for a PvE character, only Pvp. If you really like PvP and don't care about PvE at all, the pvp packs are perfect for you... that's the only reason they made them. Someone can pay some money to just play the PvP portion of the game.

but isn't the "you can't use them in pve though" argument null because....well..does anyone even care about the PVE/leveling process of the game or am i alone?

As said by the poster above: the skill packs only unlock skills for your PvP-only characters. PvP characters are stuck in the PvP island only, while you as a PvE character is free to move around in the rest of the world. PvE characters can be taken to PvP, but not the other way round.

Originally posted by anakinsella

but isn't the "you can't use them in pve though" argument null because....well..does anyone even care about the PVE/leveling process of the game or am i alone?

You get the PvE crowd who simply play for the storyline, quests etc. They get a kick out of doing this as it is in large supply.

Then you get the PvP crowd who couldn't give a flying duck about PvE and as a result do not want to level characters in order to do what they love. ArenaNet therefore allow you to create level 20 characters that can only access the Battle Isles (PvP territiory). These characters unlock skills by accumulating Balthazar Faction (by playing PvP) and exchanging this faction for skills. Alternatively, if they wish to have all skills unlocked at once they can simply do this via the Guild Wars store.

Of course you get another crowd that enjoy both. They choose to level their characters and use them for PvE and PvP. Using a skill pack will not unlock any skills for these characters though, as they were leveled up.

So in essence, the unlock packs are there for those who don't feel like spending the time unlocking each individual skill. There is no need to be worried about people and the leveling process, as the majority of Guild Wars players fit into the latter two categories I mentioned and as such level their characters :) There is so much to do in PvE that PvP is an after-thought for most. This isn't the type of game where you level a character, collect the best items then PvP.

Hope to see you in-game!

Remember aswell that skill packs unlock those skills for use by heroes aswell

but yeah, it just saves grinding the game to unlock the skills so that PvP'ers can play straight out of the box, so to speak 

The masses spoke out, not a single person here or there. In the beggining there was no such thing as buying any skills, all had to be earned via PvE or PvP rewards. Anet catered to it's customer base, so this question isn't a Anet question but a question to the players. But we know their answer and it was "yes we would like an option to outeright buy the skills". So it happened.

I can't speak for everyone, but I enjoy skill hunting.. I'm close to having captured all the assassin elite skills. I admit though that I don't really care for PVP.. I'm more a PVE player.

The skill packs don't really give you much of an advantage over other players since you won't be using all the skills it offers. I guess it does increase the size of your "e-peen" so to speak since you can go around saying you are teh leetness with Unlocked All Skills. But wever.

This is a skill based game, as such anyone whos intersted in competing in PVP and doesnt want to grind PVE for a few months to get all the skills is given the option to buy the skill pack. It took me a couple of years to finish the games content and I still havent unlocked all the skills, but then again im not into the PVP part of this game so i dont care, but if was into pvp I cant imagine someone wanting to wad through all the content just to be competative in pvp. I wish they handles this a little better because part of the reason I never got into pvp was because I was to busy doing PVE and knew I wouldnt be competative until i got most of the skills and all of the attribute point, which can take forever. You can make a seperate PVP character that gets max level stats and attributes but whats the fun in that? I wanted to take my PVE character into PVP but that just didnt work out. But that was their idea to have PVP as the end game but really people into PVP dont want it to be a reward for completing PVE they just wanna pvp.

You actually don't need all the skills. All you need is to unlock the skills required for a specific build for a specific character. While you're playing that build you'll accumulate enough faction to start unlocking skills haphazardly or unlocking skills for other builds. I started off by choosing a specific profession and unlocking all non-elites for it. I then moved on to the next. Now I've done all normal skills and am unlocking insignias and other items. Every now and again I use some faction to unlock an elite.

If your a little ADD like me and you don't care about be competitive in pvp just unlock whatever skills you think are the coolest as soon as you get enough faction. This way you don't have to keep anything in mind like what skills are for what build you can just mash together skill bars. And then once you finally want to get serious you'll have quite a few decent skills to make real builds. Don't use ADD inspired builds in high pve/pvp though because unless you have a really understanding team. By the way I don't actually have ADD I just...hey tacos...om nom om nom nom nom.

You could always get the best current builds from PvXWiki